Across the Threshold
by FrozenPaladin
Summary: As his mortality and strength fade away, Simon Petrikov, now without a name, lies alone buried in a snowdrift, thinking to himself...


He's been lying in this snowdrift for days, too weak to even stand. The falling snow has buried him by now, and somewhere in the back of his mind, the nameless man considers how this could potentially be a very bad thing. But the severe ache emanating from every bone, every joint makes it hard to think at all, so he disregards the thought and tries to go back to sleep.

Of course, he can't say for certain that he's really been lying in the same place for days. He thinks it's been days… maybe. The sun never seems to penetrate the gray cloud cover, and he lost his pocket watch ages ago. He had a pocket watch, apparently. He muses over this thought, wondering what sparked the recollection. He had been wondering about time, he notes. Yes, that might be it. He smiles, proud of his ability to still reason quite coherently.

More time passes, and the dull ache builds. A weight settles on his chest from the inside- a sensation that confuses him, considering how the only plausible crushing force he can think of is the ever-growing mass of snow covering him like some vast, impenetrable blanket. Well, he thinks, this pressure is rather annoying. It makes it hard to breathe. But he can't do much aside from continuing to lie still and hoping that it goes away.

He tries thinking about what he was doing before he got stuck. He was wandering around… looking for something. Yes, looking for something! Aha! And it was something important- very important! So important that he had kept walking, even when his legs had really started to hurt. And then… then suddenly his body had gotten a little too heavy, and his legs had folded underneath him, and he had fallen over. Yes! That was how he got here!

But now he feels anxious. He has to move again soon, or he won't be able to find the important thing. A dizziness washes over him, coaxing him out of being so worked up. It's not impossible to resist, but he isn't in the mood to fight the urge off. He's too tired. So instead, he lets the dizzy wash over him, and his mind goes blank. At some point, he drifts off to sleep without meaning to.

He's woken up by a sharp pounding in his skull and an intense throbbing pain throughout the rest of his body. An animal whine escapes his throat, and he instinctively tries to curl up, but his muscles don't seem to do anything. He doesn't associate the pain with a lack of oxygen, or his blood stagnating, or his heart weakening to the point of stopping altogether. He just lies there and wishes that the pain would stop, because he REALLY doesn't like it.

But the pain doesn't stop. It builds, worse than it has ever been before. Sharp, rhythmic pulses of agony burst into being in his chest, each one a little worse than the next. He feels limp, deflated. Like some sort of ugly rag doll, left out in the snow, moldering away in the damp and cold. His consciousness dims, and an alien giddiness rises up inside of him. Yes, he thinks. It stops now. It's going to stop now.

Then, all at once, everything does indeed stop.

He feels nothing. Nothing at all, save for a faint echo of simply being. But this doesn't register coherently. It's an echo of consciousness, detached from the brain. A lone soul floating in the endless cosmos and yet bound in the flesh, eternally. A number of philosophical statements drift by in the vast expanse of cumulative existence, left unconsidered by the being in question. Neither dead nor alive at the moment, the soul itself can do little to break its state of stagnation, even though it's separated from eternity and the endless expanse by but a thin membrane of ancient, unfathomable magic. Perhaps a quaint comment would have been ironically suitable. Who knows.

After forever and a second, the man returns to the waking world and a somewhat greater state of coherency.

His body is jolted back into life by a vast surge of magic, impossible magic. Every organ in his body slowly begins to regain its functionality, bolstered and maintained by nothing other than this same magic. He takes in a few shallow breaths that quickly turn to deep ones. He's glad to be breathing again. Not breathing hurts.

Over the next few days, his strength returns more quickly than it left. After only a few mere hours, he finds the strength to curl up into a position the places slightly less weight on his arching spine. After a day or so, he find, quite by accident, that he can lift himself off the ground enough that he actually makes a small indent in the loose snow of the ceiling. Once a week has passed, he's struck with the urge to properly get up.

His claws push away the loose clumps of snow, which have not yet had the chance to melt and become compacted as ice. He's grateful for this. Being buried alive isn't fun, even if you're only buried alive in ice. And the snow, he soon finds, has not piled higher than his standing height. These past days must have only had light flurries, he thinks to himself.

As he reaches the surface, the layers of snow fall away from one another and down into his makeshift nest. After some scrabbling, he pulls himself properly onto the surface of the snow, before collapsing onto it, exhausted from just that brief foray. A thin smile forms on his thin, bloodless lips. The air up here moves, and there is more space to move. He likes this.

In a sudden spasm of movement, he reaches up one arm and knocks away the crown that he's kept forcibly pressed against his head the whole time, secured there just before his strength utterly failed him. The smile vanishes. He begins to tremble uncontrollably, terrified. His thoughts clear as much as they ever do anymore, and questions flood in. Where is he? Where is that girl he was looking after? How long ago did she leave? She… she was called Gunter, wasn't she? Wasn't she? And… and where was his princess? What is going on?

Who… who is HE?

Tears stream down his cheeks, and he sits there, knees to his chest, shaking and alone.


End file.
